Facebook shatters six degrees of separation law

The world is getting smaller, at least according to Facebook, which on Thursday announced that among the 1.59 billion active Facebook users, each person is connected to every other person by an average of 3.57 people.

In 2011, Facebook and researchers at Cornell and the Università degli Studi di Milano said they had punched a hole in the “six degrees of separation” theory when they computed the average across the 721 million people then using the site then, and found that it was 3.74.

And that number, it claimed, had shattered the (questionable) theory that everyone is separated by six degrees of separation.

“Now, with twice as many people using the site, we’ve grown more interconnected, thus shortening the distance between any two people in the world,” said Facebook.

Not everyone is impressed with Facebook using its own numbers to make assumptions about the general population.

A sarcastic post in Gizmodo reads in part, “Facebook’s comparing it to the popular theory of six degrees of separation — presenting its user base and the general population as two groups that, hell, may as well be considered one in the same!”